One inevitable consequence of the world’s aging and shrinking
population is that there will be a growing demand for high-quality health
care. At the same time, the U.S. faces a potentially catastrophic shortage of
primary care physicians.
A study by University of Missouri School of Medicine professor
emeritus Jack Colwill and his colleagues suggests that the U.S. will need
44,000 more family physicians than it will have in less than 20 years. One
reason is that by 2025, there will be a 73 percent increase in the number of
Americans over the age of 65, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.1 Because people in this age
group typically see primary care physicians three times per year, which is
twice as often as younger adults, Colwill predicts a 29 percent growth in the
number of doctor visits by 2025, while the number of primary care physicians is
expected to increase by just 5 percent.
However, stunning advances in biotechnology offer a possible
solution to this looming crisis. At the heart of this solution is
unprecedented progress in the field of genomics.
As the Human Genome Project Web site reminds us, the human genome
consists of about 3.2 billion DNA nucleotide base pairs, which provide all of
the instructions for creating a human being with its own unique traits.2
Almost all of these (99.9 percent) are the same in all humans.
However, scientists have found 1.4 million locations where single-base DNA differences occur in humans, and these differences are believed to explain why some people
develop certain diseases, while others are immune.
Thus, the race is on to identify which genetic variations and
sequences are associated with which diseases. Ultimately, this should allow
doctors to quickly screen patients for the tendency to develop each disease
through a blood test. This will allow doctors to prevent people from
developing diseases, or to at least detect diseases in the early stages when
they are treatable with specially targeted biomedicines.
The key to making this technology really practical is reducing the
costs and time involved in mapping each...
